NEWS worthy Clips (1/3)

Update your vocabulary with news clips from around the world 

The epic, and relevant, story of the Latin language

What a great story. And it has found a book worthy to tell it.

Nicholas Ostler's Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin is the story of Latin, and like the story of language itself, it's really the story of people-what they did, what they dreamed, how they lived and died. It's told as well as any novel and is as .

Nicholas Ostler, linguist, sparkling, witty writer, is eminently suited to tell this tale. He knows all the languages involved. And he knows how to spin a yarn.

It began as a language of farmers and soldiers, spoken by people who called themselves Latins. As of the seventh century B.C., Latin was only one of a group of related Italic languages, some of which were far more widely spoken, some of which were far more widely spoken. The Latins were overshadowed by the Etruscans, whose vital culture held sway for three centuries over the Italian peninsula.

Rome surpasses neighbors

Yet, a few centuries later, Rome, the center of the Latins, has surpassed the Etruscan cities, just as Latin surpassed its sibling languages. Rome did so not only by conquest but also by its system of settlement, which combined agriculture with the imposition of Roman law. They may have been less poetic than the Greeks, but the Romans were geniuses of organization and . Their thrusting ambition established Latin as a forthright, workable tongue of governors and despots.

With humor and compassion, Ostler recounts how the Greeks only slowly came to realize they were being passed up. Nobody who wasn't Greek counted, as far as the Greeks were concerned. Deep down, the Romans agreed. Even as they Greece, the Romans maintained a cultural inferiority complex, much like ours via-avis English culture.

Vocabulary Focus

spin a yarn (idiom) ---to tell a good story

overshadow (v) ---to cause someone or eomething to seem less impotant

pass up (v) --- to progress beyond something or someone

inferiority complex (n phr)  ---a feeling that you are not as good, as intelligent, or as attractive as other people

Specialized terms

继续>>下一页